Ask HN: What is your ideal Android phone like?

[riams]

Recently, we've seen a few topics on HN discussing the virtues of different smartphone platforms, most noticeably iOS and Android. Although differences between the two platforms exist, most tend to come to the conclusion that Android is slightly less polished, and therefore slightly inferior to iOS.

So I've been thinking about this question quite a bit recently. How would your ideal Android phone be like? What features should it have (or not have)? I know that the HN crowd isn't representative of the general population, but let's face it. We're early adopters. What we're excited about today, will be popular mainstream in a few years.

[riams]

I haven't come to a good answer for this myself, but lately, I've been wanting a simple phone more and more, one which doesn't clash with the feature-set of the tablet. One that does simple things, like syncing, texting, and calling, really well. With an insane battery life. Design-wise, it has to be clean and beautiful, both the phone itself, and its UI.

[dagw]

Must be able to take a beating without falling apart, waterproof is also a definite plus. Must be able to carry it in a pocket with keys, spare change etc. without worrying about the screen getting scratched. A battery that gives me minimum of 2-3 days of 'regular' use between charges. Cost less than 3000 SEK (~$400) without any sort of contract or subsidies. And a manufacturer that is reasonably good about updating the OS even after it's more than a year old.

For what it's worth the Motorola Defy+ is probably the closest to my dream phone available at the moment.

[makecheck]

I think the last one (manufacturers providing updates) is the most important and is probably why Android is doomed in the long run: because carriers do not appear to care about updates at all.

Having a device with Android 2.1 was cool for about a few months until it became clear that it would never, ever be upgraded again. I have since moved to an iPhone and am overjoyed that it is updated regularly (probably because it is Apple, not the lazy carriers, who decides when an update is allowed). Sure, Apple eventually drops old hardware too, but at least they wait years to do that and in between there are several really substantial improvements.

[tdfx]

Some kind of integrated messaging. Something forced on all Android users by default the way iMessage is. Google Talk could've replaced SMS years ago if Google had the vision to do it. Instead it's still a 3rd tier messaging solution used by a small minority of users while everyone else remains fragmented on Skype, Yahoo Messenger, MSN/Live Messenger, and to some extent AIM. Why Google Talk and Google Voice continue to remain separated is a mystery to me.

[jdietrich]

Cheap, simple and IP68. I'm quite happy with nearly every feature of my HTC Magic, apart from the build quality.

[jonah]

Industrial Design of Apple, "Openness" of Android, and UX of WebOS. That's my ideal.

[wildbunny]

Hardware quality and software polish of Apple, feature set of Android.